Preserving A Culture By Selling Bread with Sahar Shomali

The Forrager Podcast for Cottage Food Businesses

Sahar Shomali lives in Los Angeles, CA and sells Iranian breads with her cottage food business, Kouzeh.

Sahar is a highly-trained pastry chef and worked for many years in some of LA’s top-end restaurants.

But after being frustrated that she couldn’t find the great bread that she remembered from growing up in Iran, she decided to make it herself.

From there, her home bakery was born, and soon after she decided to leave the restaurant world and focus on her business full-time.

Her cottage food bakery is super-niched, since Sahar decided to only sell bread that comes from Iran.

In this episode, you’ll hear how Sahar rediscovered the breads that she grew up with in Iran, what it was like to transition from working in a massive commercial kitchen to using her home kitchen, and how she’s managed to turn a highly-niched bakery into a solid business.

What You’ll Learn

• What it’s like to work in the “back of the house” of a high-end restaurant
• How Sahar transitioned from working in a massive commercial kitchen to using her home kitchen
• Why Sahar niched way down with her bakery
• How to get the word out about your business when starting out
• How to sell to customers in an effective way
• Why cottage food businesses had an advantage during the pandemic
• How to know that your products are priced correctly
• The benefit of having multiple points of distribution
• Sahar’s crazy experience after getting featured in the LA Times

Resources

Kouzeh Bakery website (Instagram | Facebook)

LA Times Review by Bill Addison

California Cottage Food Law

Get full show notes and transcript here: https://forrager.com/podcast/70